


ode (or, the primrose seeds)

by orphan_account



Category: The Lorien Legacies - All Media Types, The Lorien Legacies - Pittacus Lore
Genre: F/F, Fantasy AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 10:45:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5453846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Lexa is an archivist, the stars shine much too bright overhead, and Naveen promises the skies will fall down one day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ode (or, the primrose seeds)

**Author's Note:**

> hannah is one

i.

Laughing.

Always laughing.

Lexa doesn’t quite understand the upturn of the younger man’s smile as his brilliant green eyes harden into something more crystalline, but she pities him. Maybe. She’d pity him more if his hands weren’t the ones spreading drying parchment across the floor.

“Don’t come here again,” and for emphasis she raises the quill mildly threateningly in front of his grinning face where the mass of black curls falls in a curtain.

Naveen dances away.

ii.

Curling upwards into the air, the graying smoke melding itself into the sky looks little more than a decoration up here. Like fading ink mixing into the horizon, almost, but that could only be because Lexa’s life revolves too little on the delights of company.

“Lexa, Her Majesty’s looking for you,” Crayton informs over the pile of parchment spilling out of his arms. He smiles abashedly, and Lexa frees him from their onslaught. “Thanks,” he murmurs, pushing his glasses to his face.

“Don’t mention it,” Lexa means to say, but her thoughts wrap themselves around the perpetual golden of the queen’s locks instead and she finds herself asking, what now?

Crayton shrugs, offers another smile, and disappears down the corridor.

iii.

(Much, apparently, as scrolls topple from the delicate balance Lexa had arranged in her arms.)

iv.

She finds herself in the armory exactly twice in her life: once, because she stumbled in drunk, and the other because -

Actually, she was drunk both times, now that she thinks of it.

v.

“Naveen,” Lexa’s eyes narrow at the man, “I told you not to come here again,” and if to prove something, she remembers vividly the hours spent recreating those documents.

Naveen steps back. He holds up his arms in surrender, and he actually looks it this time. “It’s Walker,” he says, “she claims you’re ignoring her.”

“I’m been ignoring the meeting my fist needs with her face,” Lexa mutters, but her previous scowl softens - albeit slightly. Naveen catches this and winks.

vi.

The celebrations thrown demand to be described. Strewn feasts large enough to feed everyone in the kingdom, colors of gold and purple adorning the halls and the people, oh, the people with their clothes of silk and spun from the stars themselves, glittering and with rosing cheeks as hands brush against hands.

Lexa’s never been fond of them, but they offer a break from her ink-infested mind, so she takes what she can get.

(The food is to die for, anyway.)

A shoulder nudges her own. “So,” Walker begins, “Naveen told me you wished to arrange a meeting with your fist and my face.” She smirks, her colored red hair falling in strands against the leather of her clothes. She’s close enough Lexa can smell the lingering metal.

“Good.” Lexa replies. She nudges Walker’s shoulder back. “I thought you hated these things.”

Walker’s eyes flicker from the young men dancing together back to Lexa. Her dark brown eyes are almost reminiscent of ink sinking into the tan of parchment. Almost. “Used to,” she corrects, “when we lived under that tyrannical monster.”

“And now you’re okay with everything?”

“Not everything’s perfect, Lexa,” Walker agrees, “but Queen Hart is doing much better than any other monarch I’ve seen.”

Lexa sighs. “But maybe it’s a sign we shouldn’t be ruled.”

vii.

Naveen’s frowning the next time she sees him.

viii.

“Naveen,” Lexa begins, her words falling stiffly from her lips. Devektra is better at this, she concedes, finally, but where the woman is Lexa has no idea. Off with other women, probably, and charming them with ease. Sandor could take lessons from her.

Naveen stops her. “You know we can’t last like this,” and his lips barely part. “we’ll never be...” He trails off, stopping, and disappears out the library.

But not before forcing himself a smile.

ix.

The stars shine much too brightly overhead, sometimes.

x.

“Naveen isn’t broken,” Marina says with more force than Lexa has ever heard from the younger woman. She crosses her arms over her chest, and faintly Lexa recalls how the two would disappear around corridors together, laughing and falling into each other.

But it isn’t her place to wonder.

Lexa’s eyebrows raise. “I never said he was.”

Marina’s gaze softens, slightly, yet the edge to her words never completely fades. “I’ll talk to him. No offense, but you aren’t the best with words.”

xi.

But, even so, there’s a certain magic around the stars (or maybe only because Devektra always dreamt there was).

xii.

There’s a system surrounding her work. A familiarity of the smell of ink and the staining of her fingertips. Pleasant or not, Lexa never quite decided, but she can’t quite imagine herself anywhere else.

xiii.

Naveen’s smiling.

xiv.

Marina floats up the staircase with all the grace in the kingdom, and she knocks three times on the door just barely ajar. “Lexa?”

“Come in,” Lexa mouths around a quill as she tucks the wayward scrolls away.

Marina’s shoulders fall, slightly, and whatever grace she might have possessed tucks itself away in the bleaker corner of her mind. “I apologize for my words the other day. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Lexa’s eyebrows raise. She takes the quill in her hand. “Don’t apologize. It’s true.” Yet Marina doesn’t brighten like Lexa expects. Or perhaps she has spent so much time in Naveen’s company, unwilling or not, that she’s expected most to react like him.

xv.

“You should be celebrating,” Walker chides with an incredible lack of emotion. Beyond them, amidst the crowd, Princess Sarah is waltzing with royalty Lexa could recall if she wanted to.

Lexa’s back presses against the stone of the wall. It smells faintly of wine, or maybe that’s just the people around her. She has half the idea to accuse Walker, but the woman never drinks on duty. Which she’s technically always on.

How they met again, Lexa can’t quite recall.

“It’s quieter here.” Lexa replies.

Crayton smiles at her as he passes, his hand clutching his daughter’s, so she gives him one in return. Marina passes with Naveen and Maren in toe, clutching both their hands and smiling wider than even Naveen. Maren allows herself a small one in return, if only because Marina is beside her. Glass shatters somewhere in the crowd which Lexa assumes could only be Stanley.

She nudges Walker. “Tonight must be your lucky night,” to which Walker frowns.

“Adrien has it.”

“You, not working? The stars truly are falling down.”

Walker sighs.

xvi.

The messenger arrives panting, and they babble words from their lips as they recite the text on the scroll by heart.

xvii.

Walker is the first among them to volunteer.

xviii.

Maren leaves as well, and Stanley follows her with what Lexa suspects to be misplaced arrogance. Crayton entrusts Ella in Lexa’s care, and she half wants to tell him not to act as if he’s going to die. He’s just a diplomat.

Then again, she’s just an archivist and she’s been in worse situations.

xix.

Marina brings loaves from the kitchens, then soup when she decides to brave the countless stone steps. They both know she can get her own food, but Lexa suspects Marina misses the company.

Certain company. But neither of them will actually admit to it being anything.

“Thank you, Marina,” Lexa says with a smile, and Marina nearly starts.

xx.

(”What are you talking about? I smile plenty.”)

xxi.

The clouds darken, the sea-smell rises up, and Lexa half expects the ink to run off the pages.

Somethings sits strangely in her stomach now.

xxii.

Naveen brings flowers up to Lexa occasionally. Large, boasting flowers with petals like the midnight sky and the sun at daybreak. They brighten the room up, Lexa admits, and she always remembers to smile at him when he arrives with new ones.

Apparently, Marina grows them in her spare time. Naveen helps her, because how could he not, and occasionally someone by the name of Daniela comes around as well.

Yet, her thoughts among the clutter on her desk and the words she’s been scrawling with ink since she learned to write, she begins to forget them. So Naveen tells her he’s going to stay in the room until she starts taking care of them.

It takes longer than she might have thought.

xxiii.

“You’re lonely.”

“I’m not.”

“You are! I know! Papa gets that look when he thinks about my mother.”

xxiv.

Walker returns with a busted lip and the frown she sports always.

xxv.

If you follow the sound of Naveen’s laughter, eventually you’ll come across some type of atrocity he cooks up by himself or with Stanley’s help.

Except when you don’t find the atrocity, and instead find the two wrapped in each other with their foreheads touching.

xxvi.

Walker’s armor sits somewhere, being cleaned by someone other than herself even though she’s never trusted anyone else to take care of it. Her linen tunic tucks into her brown pants with a sort of casualness Lexa has never once associated with the other woman. Her dark roots are beginning to show, and that’s what truly puzzles Lexa.

She leans against the doorframe. “You would have liked it.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Kingdom of Lorien. You would have liked it.”

“Doubtful.” Yet Lexa can’t quite manage to focus on her work. Perhaps because Walker’s gaze lingers on the flowers, perhaps because Walker is acting so, so strange. “Isn’t that how you got your busted lip?”

Walker shakes her head. “That was Maren. She told me the punch was long overdue,” she says to which Lexa smiles.

“Thank Maren for that,” she says, then adds, “now I won’t have to punch you,” at Walker’s confused frown.

xxvii.

“Thank you for looking after Ella,” Crayton murmurs, his smile as genuine as always.

Lexa nods. “Of course.”

xxviii.

Princess Sarah marries Prince John of Lorien. It is a festive affair, one of colors and fancy dress and smells of roast duck and venison, and Lexa tells herself if she doesn’t quit at the cheeses she’s going to make herself sick.

The two look nice together, Lexa supposes, but her attention sooner falls towards Walker and her extended hand.

“Dance with me.”

Lexa frowns. “I’m an archivist. I don’t dance.”

Walker’s eyebrows raise. “I’m a guard. Neither do I.”

Lexa swallows. Her eyes glance over Naveen and Stanley, over Maren and Marina, over Adam and Hannah, over Princess Sarah and Prince John.

She takes Walker’s hand.

xxix.

(Neither of them can actually dance, but Walker does it better.)

xxx.

The crescent moon carves itself hollow into the midnight stretch of darkness, yet there’s something calming about Walker form sprawled across from her in Lexa’ bed. There’s something overdue about the way her clothes seem to meld with the sheets in this illusion the nighttime creates.

xxxi.

They steal kisses in corridors, between meetings, and in the quiet privacy of corners in galas.

xxxii.

The world has never been fine, not truly, but now --

xxxiii.

There’s a certain calmness in Karen’s smile.


End file.
